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Higuain's Childhood Forced Yard Repairs

By: Adam Jardy

The Columbus Dispatch - March 01, 2013 08:14 AM

The years of raising a family of soccer players finally took its toll on Nancy Zacarias.

As the wife of Jorge Higuain, she not only married an Argentine soccer player, but wound up raising two more. And years before Federico and Gonzalo Higuain were suiting up for the Columbus Crew and Real Madrid, respectively, there was just one backyard in which to practice.

Until, that is, one window too many was broken.

“We broke a lot of windows,” Federico Higuain, laughing, said through a translator.

Federico, the second of four sons, described a long backyard at his parents’ house in Argentina. Where it met the house sat a grilling area where the family would cook out, he said, that was accompanied by a number of light fixtures.

The shape of the yard created a natural soccer field of sorts, but it also put the house directly in the line of fire.

“It had a lot of windows, a lot of lights,” Higuain said. “My brothers and my friends were always playing soccer. We were hitting every window possible. We changed the kind of glass in the windows but at one point my mom said enough is enough.”

Adding to the mess was the fact that the Higuain family had an irrigation system for the backyard – one that the kids did not always have patience for.

“We would come back from school and it was hot so we would turn on the system and play on a muddy field,” he said. “We broke the irrigation system several times. It was a big mess.”

Finally, Higuain’s mother could take no more, and a pool was put in near the house that forced the kids to seek out alternate fields.

Now entering his second season with the Crew, Higuain is embracing Columbus but still holds an obvious soft spot for his home country. While training in the Orlando area as part of the Disney Pro Soccer Classic this preseason, Higuain found an authentic Argentinian restaurant called “The Knife.”

He visited the restaurant at least three times while in town.

“It was exciting to have him here,” said Alexis Schwartzman, a manager at the restaurant. “His name is enormous in Argentina. I saw him play for Colon. He was faster and quicker than the others.”< /p>

Not only did Higuain visit the place on multiple occasions, but he brought other Spanish-speaking players along with him. During one visit, the wait staff posed for a photo alongside Jairo Arrieta, Agustin Viana, Glauber and Matias Sanchez.

“He was super great,” store owner Ariel Herrerd said. “He joked around and was very nice to all of us.”